"Where does God dwell?"

The Kingdom

“The Kotzker rebbe, Menachem Mendel, a famous hasidic teacher in the nineteenth century, who lived his last twenty years in voluntary seclusion, asked one of his students, 'Where does God dwell?' As the student stumbled in his attempt to respond, the Kotzker rebbe answered his own question: 'God resides wherever we let God in.'”

Rabbi David A. Cooper (God is a Verb)

Some of us spend our whole lives searching for God. We meditate, we pray, we go to church, or temple, or mosque. I saw a man on the news last night, a Canadian, helping with the search for survivors in Nepal. He was at a monastery for spiritual retreat when the earthquake happened. He went half-way around the world in search of the sacred, and found it, not at the monastery, but digging through the rubble of destroyed buildings. “Split wood, I am there. Lift up a rock, you will find me there.” (Gospel of Thomas, 77b)

There is nothing wrong with praying and meditating, with getting on your knees and beseeching. Our spirits yearn for connection—but they need not. Because the divine is inescapable. Luke (17:20-21) quotes Jesus as saying, “If your leaders say to you, 'Look! The kingdom is in the heavens!' then the birds will be there before you are. If they say that the Kingdom is in the sea, then the fish will be there before you are. Rather, the Kingdom is within you and it is outside of you.” Do we believe that? That the Kingdom is here now? That we are part of it; that it is within us and within all things if we but have eyes to see? If so, we can stop searching and simply allow divine presence.

I wonder if you are like me—do you have dialog going inside your head? Is there a stream of questions, of song lyrics, of poetic words running along as background? Yesterday, I had the hymn, “God is in His Holy Temple” playing in my head all day long. Ask yourself this, “To whom am I speaking inside my head? Who answers? Where do my prayers go when I pray? Who is singing these songs and speaking in poems?” Is it the Kingdom within?

                                                                In the Spirit,

                                                                    Jane